Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance

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Front page of Religious Tolerance.

The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance is a group formed by five people to spread their message of religious tolerance and to correct perceived and real misinformation on many world religions. They maintain a website, whose stated purpose is to promote religious tolerance. It is a multi-faith group of five members who identify themselves as a Christian, Atheist, Wiccan, Agnostic and Zen Buddhist.

The website was created in 1995 to counter a perceived wealth of misinformation on different religions, as well as a general lack of religious tolerance on the world wide web. As of 2006, it contains over 3,300 essays on a variety of topics including world religions, morality, spirituality, religious intolerance, new religious movements and more.

Many anti-cult sites on the internet accuse the group of being cult apologists.

Many of the essays were written by the group's founder, Bruce Robinson. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto, with a BaSc degree in Engineering Physics, and worked for a large multi-national chemical company for 38 years before early retirement. His professional interests were in the development of electronic instrumentation.

The website states that it tries to write accurate, impartial, balanced essays, almost all of which mention several sources and references. A record is kept of noted errors and corrections. In their own words (from their credentials page):

"We are not theologians or religious innovators; we are simply reporters on religion, spirituality, and ethics. We do not create or promote new religious beliefs. Rather, we explain all of the points of view which others teach on topics as varied as abortion access, equal rights for homosexuals, heaven and hell, God, Satan, and hundreds of other social and religious topics."

The information available has been cited and used by the Toronto Star, CBS News, CSIS, and the FBI. Encyclopædia Britannica reviewed them as the best site for information on religious tolerance.

[edit] Controversy, criticism and praise

As mentioned above, in addition to showcasing many different religions, the site also deals with controversial subjects such as homosexuality and abortion, discussing all sides of each issue and how they relate to different faiths. The maintainers of the site receive a fair amount of hate mail, mostly from conservative people and groups, who find the articles to be distasteful, blasphemous and immoral. However, the majority of responses to the site are complimentary, and the maintainers are praised for being unbiased, honest and accommodating, while the articles themselves are praised for being easy-to-read, well-researched and accurate.

The controversial subject matter has led to the site being banned by a number of web rating groups such as CleanNet and CyberPatrol. However, these bans have since been lifted. The site is still banned by some governments such as Saudi Arabia.

On the subject of Scientology, almost all of the pages are authored or co-authored by Al Buttnor, who is the Director of Special Affairs for the Church of Scientology Toronto. As well, the site is currently blocking the Wayback Machine of Internet Archive from showing previous versions of the pages for comparision.